


Where We Going Buck? The Future.

by DawnMalfoy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes & Shuri Friendship, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, F/F, Fix-It, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Recovery, Science Nerd Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:14:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21792079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnMalfoy/pseuds/DawnMalfoy
Summary: The future is everything Bucky could ever have hoped for - and nothing he could ever have predicted.
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Thor, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	Where We Going Buck? The Future.

**Author's Note:**

> I had this hanging around my drafts and kind of editted it and decided to post it. 
> 
> I haven't posted in like 2 years. My ex and I broke up - I got a degree (fun fact I'm officially a Chemist now!) and half way to being a medical doctor. My old relationship was... strength building but ruined my love of a lot of artisitic pursuits. I wrote this post endgame but honestly I don't know how I feel about my writing style and I know I have uncomplete fics but my view on life and love and so, so much has changed. 
> 
> So hi guys, it's DawnMalfoy :) Hope you like my rambling non perfect narrator Bucky

The new world is nothing like Howard Stark had predicted really. 

Bucky tries not to think about Howard too much. He doesn’t like remembering what he’d done to him, but equally he doesn’t like thinking about the past where he’d had two arms and a slew of girls who he and Howard had charmed together. It’s complicated and Bucky doesn’t really like complicated anymore. 

Howard had told him that there’d be flying cars and probably more powerful computers, but even Howard Stark hadn’t predicted the information highway that was the internet. They’d talk about how everyone would probably be wearing aluminium foil outfits and travelling into space. Some nights, when the howling commandos were back at SHIELD headquarters and Peggy, Steve and the commander were staring at a map of Europe, planning their next strike Howard had handed over a giggle-smoke and they’d stared at the roof of the private lab talking about how maybe in the future what they were doing would be legal. 

When Howard had told him about space travel it sounded fun. 

Howard said that one day, going up to the moon would be as normal as flying to a new country. That he was sure Stark tech would be up to the challenge before they were both too old to really enjoy being able to see space in person. Howard was very rarely wrong - and Bucky still didn’t like to think about the fact that Howard really should be around to see the advent of convenient space travel. 

From what he’s learnt from Steve there’s really nothing great out there - except maybe the Asguardians. Bucky says he’d still really like to go one day. That it oughta be swell. 

When he says that Steve smiles in the weird way that Steve smiles now; where it doesn’t reach his eyes and says maybe he’ll take him one day. Bucky doesn’t think he’ll ever actually be able to ask Steve properly. 

The future isn’t all bad. Not really. 

Bucky’s taken to volunteering at the children’s hospital in Wakanda once a week. He likes the way that all of the children are too naive to realise what a large threat he poses, even deprogrammed. They point at his new vibranium based arm and giggle as he lifts them up and let them dangle from it like he’s some perverted form of monkey bars. Bucky always wanted kids. He wonders if he’d be able to have some one day, when he and Steve are done with fighting. If he’d even be allowed to - given his past and the fact that the American government still refuses to acknowledge his continued existence. 

He likes the hut on the outskirts of the city that Shuri and T’challa gifted him as well. The goats are sweet and like children are far too naive to realise that he could probably kill them if he hugged them just a little too hard. 

He’s especially fond of the runt - his Stevie who bleats and whines and drinks enough milk that Bucky thinks he should be about 5 times the size he actually is. 

Most of all, he likes being in control of his mind enough to process it and remember it all. Unlike Steve he’s had the advantage of watching as technology has improved and as the world has changed. There’s no real culture shock for him thanks to all the training HYDRA provided during his decades as the Winter Soldier - there’s no time to be shocked by technology when you need to assimilate into every new situation you’re thrown into. But he enjoys being able to marvel at the technology in Wakanda and at being able to pull it into his brain. He enjoys touching the kimoyo beads on his wrist and pulling up holographic versions of recent photos of him and Steve and him and Shuri. He enjoys being able to trawl through his own memories and remember the exact moments where those photos were taken. 

* * *

He isn’t sure how he feels about the fact that wars are still going, albeit quietly in the background of everyone’s day to day lives. He was promised when he went to fight that he was fighting in the second great war. In the war to end all wars. But then Thanos happens and that’s meant to be the last stand against this universe ending level threat and then it’s suddenly over before he can make his way to Steve to even… fuck to just hold him one last time because that’s all he’s ever wanted to do with his life. He just wanted a quiet house or apartment somewhere, not New York because it’s too foreign now. Brooklyn isn’t quite home, but he can see himself getting a house with Steve somewhere near Sam. They both like DC.

He knows that he likes not being called into conflict. He blocks it on the news and ignores it all until Steve finally shows up and there’s no time - there’s aliens and there’s guns and there’s a raccoon who wants to buy his arm. There’s Steve - standing devastated for some unknown reason that Bucky can’t seem to place and then there’s darkness.

He embraces it.

* * *

  
  


And then the strange magical man is waking him up in Wakanda and it’s five years later and Thanos is still kicking around and all Bucky wants is to know if Steve has been okay for five years without him. He wants to know if Shuri is alright. If she went away to that weird orange nostalgic filled world that he went to. 

He wonders what she would see there. If she saw her father, in the same way he’d seen his Ma and Pa and Becca. Wonders if she saw the beginnings of her lab in the same way he’d stayed in his and Steve’s first apartment. He’d wanted to stay there, with the familiar smell of pompadour and Steve’s medications in the bathroom and the bloody draft that slid in under the front door. He’d wanted to bring Shuri there, to show her his comfort zone in the same way she’d opened hers up to him. He’d longed for Steve, small and riddled with sickness to stumble through the door with a black eye. 

But there isn’t time to think because Steve is holding a shattered shield and Thor’s hammer and the fucking purple guy is there again and Bucky can’t think about anything except for saving Steve from what is perhaps the biggest fight he’s ever wrangled himself into. 

  
  


And then, in something Howard would never have predicted about the future his son snapped his fingers. 

  
  


Bucky wonders, if he had told Howard to get rid of the fucking tesserect when they’d gone to collect it, if maybe Tony would never have had to do it. Everyone talks about how brave it is, how sacrificing Tony had saved half of the universe. How Iron Man will forever be remembered as the unselfish, genius hero of the universe. 

But standing at the funeral watching as Morgan stares at the hologram of Tony, he’s reminded of how Steve had grown up knowing his father had sacrificed his life for the greater good and how it didn’t really make any of it better. He remembers Shuri, crying about her father, a man of peace who had died because of people’s political agendas while making adjustments to his arm in a lab, because 16 year old princesses don’t show that they miss their father in a nation of warriors and superhero princes. 

And then after the funeral and after the world moves on, The Avengers or whatever the fuck they are still have to clean up after themselves and of course Steve volunteers to go back. And Bucky knows the plan. He fucking knows it. He’s met the guy who he and Steve have talked about and Bucky knows that Sam is ready for what they’re going to hand to him. He knows as well that Sam won’t fall for it and that he won’t be alone with the responsibility for very long. 

But fuck if it doesn’t hurt to think about the fact that Steve could just go back. 

Steve deserves it. 

They’ve loved each other for years and Bucky knows that Steve has literally tried to move the governments of the world for him. He knows that. 

But Steve deserves a normal life. A happy one. 

(No one tell Steve he said that - being in love with another man is normal. Them together in an apartment with multiple escape routes that’s a ten minute drive away from Sam’s house - that’s normal and he deserves it.)

He could go back and be with Peggy. They’d have a happy life. Kids maybe, one house in America and one in the English countryside that Steve loved so much. It might be nice to forget about all of this. 

He’s not sure how he feels about all of it. 

Shuri had been grateful for the project and Bucky had been glad to have someone stay up late at late night talking about all of this with. He loves Shuri and for all that he’s a hundred year old traumatised super soldier he’s also a twenty something who likes weed and science and Asgardian mead a bit too much for his own good. He likes talking to Shuri and he trusts her with this in the same way she’s trusted him with knowledge of her secret conversations with a lovely English girl who knows nothing about her being royalty. They’re young and foolish and it feels good to pretend that he isn’t 100 years out of his time. 

So when Banner hits the button and counts to five and Steve isn’t there and the guy is on the bench 10 seconds later, Bucky just wants to fucking run to the hidden wakandan jet that Shuri sent him. He misses his best friend and he misses his apartment that Steve kind of hates, but puts up with for him. 

He can’t let everyone know though. Steve wants to retire. Bucky’s not sure he’s ready yet. He wasn’t ready to go to war when he’d been called up but now he’s not sure he’s quite ready to come home. The warriors in Wakanda seem to understand. They talk sometimes, when Shuri is too caught up in her work to pay much attention to the ‘broken white boy’. They talk about how everyone seems caught up with treating him and Steve as though they are hundred year old men, when really at the top of Steve’s bucket list currently is going to pride in a rainbow, possibly slutty version of the Captain America suit. Bucky just wants to work out a way that they can get high again, because fuck if he doesn’t want to listen to his little artist Stevie babbling about the pretty colours of light merging together. 

Shuri had always told him they’d work on it together. They’ll probably finally have time to now. Steve will be more than happy to sample all of their experiments anyway. 

Bucky smiles when Sam finally realises that the shield is his now. He’s fairly convinced by the man that is given the shield, although Bucky gives it about a month before Sam realises that they’ve managed to pull the wool over his eyes. They can probably tell him about the apartment after that. 

Bruce already looks suspicious but Bucky knows he won’t say anything. 

So as Sam walks back into the house with the shield Bucky walks over to the cloaked craft and gets inside. Bruce sees as he decloaks it and says nothing about it. He has a feeling Bruce knows a lot about loving someone who’s whole life belongs to serving other people. He wishes he could talk to Bruce more. Get to know him. 

Steve always said that Bruce was Bucky’s kind of person. Bucky wonders if, maybe if he hadn’t of killed Tony’s parents he could have joined the science bros. He wonders how well Bruce and Shuri would get along. 

He almost asks Bruce to join him on the plane, but something tells him that it wouldn’t be what Bruce wants. 

So Bucky gets onto the jet, smiles at Danai and sits down to finally go back to Wakanda. 

When he gets there, Steve is waiting on the landing pad, frowning at something Shuri is saying to him. He’s taken off his suit and is in a pair of grey track pants and a t-shirt. There’s graphite on his hand already and Bucky can’t help but laugh because of course Steve would start drawing the moment he was officially retired. 

When he kisses Bucky, it’s not desperate or bruising or hidden away. 

It’s as though they have all the time in the world. Maybe they do.

“Hey! Broken White Boys! I did not build you another time machine just to watch you make out. Bucky and I have important things to do!”

Bucky has never been so grateful to have superhuman hearing as when he hears Steve whine under his breath “yeah and I’m important things.”

So maybe the future is a little different to what Howard predicted. Maybe it’s a little bit more apocalyptic and maybe his kid was a little more selfless than he would have imagined. Perhaps he and Steve are more than the elderly best friends that Howard had predicted they’d be. Bucky isn’t sure if Howard would have been able to predict the powers that the tesseract would have made their small little planet a target for so many alien races. 

He thinks Howard might have liked it.

Although after hearing about the Howard who came into being, he doesn’t feel as though he’d particularly like sharing this beautiful future with him. There’s complex emotions surrounding the whole thing that he doesn’t particularly feel like picking at right now. Maybe later after Shuri is done bullying Steve about the fact that she had to build a time machine as good as Tony Stark’s just so he could finally have a honeymoon phase with his boyfriend. 

But god, looking at Shuri smile as Steve pouts over her teasing, he isn’t sure he’d want the future any other way. 


End file.
